Japanese company Hisaka placed an order with Schuler for a 15,000-metric-ton press with multi-cylinder technology. The press facility will be delivered by Schuler to a HISAKA production site in Malaysia this year. By mid-2016, it will go into operation there to produce heat exchanger plates from stainless steel or titanium in superior quality.
An industrial heat exchanger is made up of about 500 to 1,000 embossed plates, which can reach a size of up to several square meters. Liquids are heated or cooled by passing between the plates. The embossed flow channels are created in a typical herringbone pattern. In order to form these plates, Schuler has developed the multi-cylinder technology, which combines several short-stroke pistons in a single cylinder plate. Depending on the size of the heat exchanger plate, different hydraulic circuits can be selected with varying pressures being generated and applied individually permitting the uniform distribution of the press force across the entire surface of the plate.
The process is capable of achieving an accurate and uniform embossing depth with less than one tenth of a millimeter tolerance and a consistently high reproducible plate quality. The press for HISAKA is constructed in a proven plate design, which gives the machine its necessary rigidity. Due to the upstroking functionality, the short-stroke presses are of very compact design. The production rate of the press is four heat exchanger plates per minute. It is is equipped with a crossbar vacuum-cup feed system from Schuler for the automatic destacking and feeding of the plates into the press.
Thus, HISAKA can produce heat exchanger plates with accurate and uniform embossing depths and minimum tolerances – in a consistently high quality.